Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

GEO wins tuition waiver security! Pickets suspended!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

In a successful 2-day strike - the first by a union local at the University of Illinois in 10-years, and one of the largest in the history of graduate unions in the US - the GEO has secured a commitment to retain tuition waivers for graduate employees. The University had ...

Call to action: Call the U of I this Wednesday, and support graduate employees

Monday, November 9th, 2009

This Thursday, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees will meet in Springfield. Members of the GEO will be there to remind them of the urgency of reaching agreement on a fair contract. You may not be able to be in Springfield, but you can play your part in persuading ...

Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

The Irish Times aren't generally known for coherent or incisive editorials, but their reaction to the Ryan report makes for sobering reading: We have to call this kind of abuse by its proper name – torture. We must also call the organised exploitation of unpaid child labour – young girls placed ...

This is integration

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Amidst a BBC report on Roma migration in Europe is this note on education policy in Hungary, which : In Hungary, an earlier policy to give money to schools for the mentally disabled, to which a disproportionate number of Roma were sent, was abandoned when it was realised that it encouraged ...

Making NCA manageable

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

I'm not heading to the NCA meeting myself, but some friends have been asking about ways to make it easier to find sessions of interest. I therefore offer this entry as a way for people to note and track such sessions. I hope that many of my ICR/U Illinois colleagues ...

Activism compendium

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

A number of items today, from a range of sources. First, the picture to the left is of Labour TD Joe Costello, who for the last 5 years has run a weekly protest outside the Mater hospital, calling for better healthcare. Second, potentially good news for grad employees in private universities in ...

Birth control costs shoot up for US students

Monday, November 26th, 2007

One of the many healthcare issues we've found ourself addressing in GEO this semester has been the huge increase in costs of the contraceptive pill from the campus healthcare centre. A New York Times story explains the tortured legislative changes that led drug companies to end their discounts to student ...

Solidarity efforts for WGA

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

As the Writers' strike continues into a second week, word of an interesting solidarity action as many of the blogs that usually cover the content generated by these writers are 'going dark' for a day to express their support. This at the same time that another group of writers, working ...

Irish media literacy conference

Monday, September 17th, 2007

I recently got a mail calling for proposals for a symposium on "Media | Literacy | Education" to take place 3rd November in Dublin. Proposals are due by 28th September:We are specifically looking for people to contribute to A) parallel breakout sessions and B) general assembly presentations. The facilitated parallel breakout sessions ...

Non-traditional students in US colleges

Wednesday, May 31st, 2006

An interesting article in the NYT about non-traditional students, specifically those who have not officially graduated from high-school, though unfortunately framed as a "should they really be allowed in/ allowed to get financial aid?" issue. Somewhat informative nonetheless.